There are a few things you must take into consideration:
Bush did not win the popular vote.
Bush has a democrat Senate (thank you Jeffords!).
Bush has the mainstream media against him.
We are at war.
Clinton is ignoring the protocol for past presidents and is attacking President Bush.
Far right wingers, embittered by their losses in the primaries, are actively working against him.
DESPITE all this, he has managed to get a few things passed and win the confidence of the American people. This is no small thing. His cabinet is stellar, his actions in the war have been spot on, and he has managed to speak out for those things which are most important(right to life, welare reform, military funding, missile defense, anti-Kyoto, etc.)
Please remember that President Reagan signed an amnesty bill, an evironmental bill, a tax increase, and a large farm bill. If you weren't paying attention to politics in those years, either because of age or because of disinterest, you may not remember that.
Presidient Bush is doing the best he can at this juncture. We need to help him do better, by getting him a Senate that will help.
I am not a far right winger, and I am a Bush supporter. I just happen to think that Rush's criticism on the global warming debacle, while typically overboard in its character, was accurate.
I was not going to stop supporting the President before he distanced himself from the report, and I am not certainly going to stop supporting him now. Yet, just because I refuse to join in on the attacks on Rush as a unpatriotic neo-liberal/neo-right-winger, I have been virulently attacked in this very thread. I think everyone, on all sides of this debate, needs to take a breath and collect their wits.
If Bush is smart to play to his enemies then wouldn't his supporters be smart to do the same? I mean, why aid the division among conservatives by being overly critical. Let people complain about the betrayals (even if you don't think they're betrayals). They will be the very people you will need come election day.
There is no way on earch I will not do everything I can to get a Republican majority in Congress.
I never felt betrayed by Reagan. Like I said before, I didn't feel betrayed by GHWB either. I really can overlook some things. I just worked so hard for GWB and I do feel betrayed. I will still do what I have to for the bigger picture. So will Rush and the rest, I am sure. We may not all define it the same but we do have the same goals, don't forget.
Don't forget that his judicial appointments which Leahy and Daschle have been tying up have been mainly conservative. The importance of this can't be minimized. It's often been said by conservatives that the courts have had a bigger impact on this country in the last several decades than either the President or Congress. I'm as p.o.'d as anyone about some of his actions, especially the steel tariffs. However, if Bush's only conservative legacy was to leave us with a conservative Supreme Court I would consider his Presidency worthwhile.
I'm convinced that other than a couple of things like abortion and maybe affirmative action, many liberals don't care that much these days what the President does except for his judicial appointments. And on abortion and affirmative action, it's largely the courts that have made all these liberal policies. That's why they could look the other way when Clinton signed welfare reform for instance. They figured he needed to do it to get reelected, so he could keep stocking the judiciary full of liberals. Clinton could have varied from liberal orthodoxy on alot of things and I think most of them would have yawned, as long as his court picks were solidly liberal, which they were.
I'm starting to think that liberals are just smarter than conservatives. Here you have a golden opportunity to create a much more conservative judiciary, and a Supreme Court with a solidly conservative majority for the first time in about 60 or 70 years, and all these idiot conservatives won't vote for a GOP senatorial candidate because they don't like the farm bill. And Bush has still not backed down from other conservative positions, like social security investment accounts and drilling in Alaska. It's either stupidity or they are in some way taking Bush's deviance from conservativism personally. Maybe they've had alot of personal disappointments in life, where someone didn't turn out to be what they hoped, and they view a voting decision like it's a personal thing.